The key facts

  • Ana Eliza Santos, 21, elected to the Chamber of Deputies with 500,000 votes, advises Lula on social media
  • In the first round Lula received 45% against Flavio Bolsonaro's 47%; per Datafolha it is now 49% vs 51% — a technical tie
  • Brazil's electoral court gave Meta 24 hours to prove equal treatment of the campaigns

A new influencer-turned-congresswoman

Ana Eliza Santos, 21, newly elected to Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, received about half a million votes in the October 4 elections — elections that proved a difficult moment for the Brazilian left. Two days after her victory, she travelled with a group of other successful influencer candidates to Brasilia, where she joined the effort to develop a social media strategy for President Lula ahead of his bid for a fourth term. According to her, Lula is 'always open to listening, to hearing criticism — constructive criticism, of course.' A law student herself, she says she would not have been able to get a higher education without Lula's social programmes.

The 'selfie king' and the 'finger-tapping generation'

The 80-year-old Lula does not use a mobile phone and ironically calls its users 'the finger-tapping generation.' However, after consultations with young leftists, his tone has changed: he now calls himself the 'selfie king.' 'Our ideas were very well received. We want to help him win the runoff,' said Ana Eliza, who has more than five million Instagram followers.

A path through social media

Two years ago, Ana Eliza began 'doing politics in my mum's bedroom with a phone,' as she recounts in one of her videos. Wearing T-shirts with the logo of her own brand, 'Vista Politica,' she racked up views with videos criticising Bolsonarism and took to the streets for content: in one video she follows a courier for a day, explaining a proposal on social protection for digital platform workers, while also covering lighter topics like the series 'Grey's Anatomy.' In February she will move to Brasilia, leaving the home where she lives with her mother, grandmother and younger brother. In the right-leaning legislature, she has pledged to defend free public transport and housing subsidies for students.

The left's lag in the digital sphere

'The left is lagging behind' digitally, Ana Eliza believes. 'The right understood long before the left that there is no longer any separation between social media and the street,' she said in a video shared almost 16,000 times on Instagram. 'On the other side they are called a political force, while we are called influencers. That is why we are losing the debate.' Some of her right-wing colleagues also came to politics through social media, including conservative congressman Lucas Pavanato, 28, who won three million votes.

Complaints against Meta and the runoff outlook

Ana Eliza also condemned the alleged 'interference' of American social platforms in the elections. On Monday, Brazil's electoral court gave Meta — the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — 24 hours to prove equal treatment of the Lula and Bolsonaro campaigns. Lula's party filed a complaint over the restriction of the candidate's content distribution. Meta denies acting in anyone's favour, but previously reported that some of Lula campaign's advertising ads were mistakenly disabled due to technical glitches not limited to Brazil. According to a Datafolha poll last week, the incumbent president is in a technical tie with his rival: 49% versus 51% — a gap smaller than a week earlier, when it stood at four percentage points. 'Despite all this, we need to make an effort,' Ana Eliza stressed, speaking of the need to close the gap before the October 25 runoff.